The Ending Is Inevitable
by Windswift
Summary: [Postseries] [MythoRue FakirAhiru] The Prince from the story never aged. The people from Kinkan Town did. Long after the happy ending, Mytho returns in despair.


Disclaimer: Princess Tutu does not belong to me

_**The Ending Is Inevitable**_

Costumes in a ballet have as important a role in telling the story as the steps and the music. The princely attire was associated with the man in the storybook who loved and was loved by everyone. In contrast, a transformation to a wanderer's rags symbolized the heartless prince.

So, then, it was a very distressing scene when he who had been last dressed as a triumphant prince with his princess returned to Kinkan Town, raggedly garbed again. He arrived first at Charon's house, perhaps out of luck, or because it was the closest, or maybe he had vaguely been aware that time had passed here since he left the dance academy. Whatever his reason, it was there that Mytho first stopped and knocked desperately on the door.

It took a few minutes of pounding before anyone answered him. After so many years, Fakir had grown old and slow. It was disconcerting for him to open the door to a Mytho who had not changed since Fakir was a small child, save for the wild, red-eyed, strangely empty look he had as he collapsed onto the old man.

He was not sure that Mytho recognized him, and he was fairly certain Mytho did not care anyway.

"The Prince is from a story, you know." His hands fisted tightly in Fakir's shirt. "Rue wasn't actually in _The Prince and the Raven_. She came later, from Kinkan. Because the Prince is from the story, he never ages. But even though I made her my princess, it changed nothing."

He began to see where this was heading, and a sinking feeling settled in his stomach. Rue would be nearly as old as himself now, wouldn't she.

Mytho tugged at Fakir's collar until he met the desperate eyes again. "I never thought she would really die. But she did. Rue is dead." Unspoken, his change of attire declared that his heart had died with her.

Fakir turned his head away. Mytho looked like a child compared to himself, begging for a comfort he could not give. There was nothing to be said, and he had always been better at uttering something sharp rather than something gentle anyway.

"Ducks," he mumbled. Mytho stared uncomprehendingly up at his face. "Ducks can live about twenty years, if you're lucky. I had barely ten years with Ahiru." By now, Fakir had learned to say the statement as a fact rather than a bitter accusation.

Mytho's face began to look vaguely horrified, or perhaps it had merely deepened the horror and shock that was already there. His lips formed the word "Tutu," but no sound came out.

"Moron," Fakir mumbled, and neither of them could tell to whom he was referring.

Mytho buried his face in Fakir's shirt and gave a strangled cry. "Why? What do I do when she isn't there?"

Fakir laid his hand on Mytho's head. It was an old hand, a tired one, faintly calloused from years of writing. "You scream. You run out to the pond and you throw rocks in it. You curse Drosselmeyer and the goddamned story and stupid Ahiru. You start to write a thousand stories to bring her back to life, and realize a thousand ways it could go terribly wrong.

"You let the girls at the ballet school buy you a new pet duck. But it doesn't bite you, like Ahiru, when you're upset or have said something carelessly cruel. It doesn't quack frantically like her. It can't read you, and you can't read it. It's a warm body, but not her heart.

"You give the duck back to the girls at the ballet academy and go home. You write a hundred stories about the things Ahiru used to do, because they are already true anyway. How she followed you to the ballet school, and you had to sneak her in and promise to the teacher that your pet duck would be completely well-behaved. How the girls cooed over Ahiru as she awed over the dances.

"You get a bird feeder and a bird bath and put them in the yard. You listen to Swan Lake and think what a lovely prima donna Ahiru would have been if she didn't fall flat on her face. You never stop loving her, even after everything else comes to an end."

"But it hurts," Mytho whispered.

"Ahiru didn't give you your heart back to make you suffer. Are you going to misuse her gift?"

He avoided the question, murmuring instead, "Princess Tutu said it would be a happy ending."

The next morning, the ballet academy found a young man no one had ever seen before practicing in the studio. He had dressed in the part of a prince, dancing a pas de deux alone with such sadness it was palpable. Still, his movements were so graceful, so sure and loving, that it seemed his partner was merely invisible.

Even for a happy ending, the ending was inevitable.

**…****  
Owari  
…**

_-Windswift_


End file.
